Ex-captives 'rejoined fight' in Afghanistan

Former Guantanamo detainees have organised a jailbreak in Afghanistan, kidnapped Chinese engineers and taken leadership positions with the Taliban, the US military says.

The former detainees were released from the prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba between 2002-2004 by claiming to be innocent or low-level figures, the military said in a statement, responding to questions about ex-prisoners who had allegedly resumed fighting.

The Pentagon gave brief descriptions of six detainees, including two it said were killed in fighting in Afghanistan, which the US invaded to oust the Taliban regime following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.

The statement suggested that the six were released from Guantanamo by mistake.

“These former detainees successfully lied to US officials, sometimes for over three years,” said Navy Commander Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

Last week, a Pentagon official, Joseph Benkert, testified to Congress that about 30 former detainees had rejoined the fight against the US.

Other US officials have made similar claims about prisoners at Guantanamo, where the military now holds about 380 men mostly on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban.

However, Guantanamo critics say it is part of a US campaign to justify the detention of hundreds of men without charges at the remote base.

Candace Gorman, a Chicago-based lawyer for two Guantanamo detainees, noted that three of the names on the Pentagon list did not appear on official rosters of detainees. She said she believed they were never actually held at the prison in south-east Cuba.

“To say detainees are back on the battlefield has become one of their justifications for indefinite detention,” Gorman said. “They have to justify the cruelty of what they’re doing.”

The military said two of the men were killed in Afghanistan: Mohammed Yusif Yaqub, a commander of Taliban operations in southern Afghanistan who died in May 2004 while fighting US forces, and Maulavi Abdul Ghaffar, a Taliban leader killed in a September 2004 raid by Afghan security forces.

A third man, Mohammed Ismail, was captured during an attack on US forces near Kandahar.

The military also said Abdullah Mahsud, released in March 2004, was discovered after his release to have links to the Taliban and al-Qaida. He allegedly directed the kidnapping of two Chinese engineers in Pakistan in October 2004.

The other two on the list were Abdul Rahman Noor, who was released from Guantanamo in July 2003 and “has since participated in fighting against US forces near Kandahar”, and Mohammed Nayim Farouq, who “renewed his association with Taliban and al Qaida members” after his July 2003 release.